Blocking BitTorrent sites doesn’t stop piracy—but Spotify might

A United Kingdom judge ruled Thursday that Virgin Media, BSkyB, BT, and other British telcos must block access to BitTorrent sites Fenopy, Kickass Torrents, and H33T.com.

In a written decision, Judge Richard Arnold said that these sites enable copyright infringement “on an industrial scale.” Last year, another British court ruled that The Pirate Bay must be blocked because it allows for significant copyright infringement.

“Data around the blocking of Pirate Bay in the UK last April showed little negative impact on file sharing, which would have been due to the slew of copycat sites set up on proxy servers,” Gregory Mead, chief executive of Musicmetric's parent company Semetric, said in a statement on Thursday.

“Blocking websites isn’t as simple as shutting down a market stall selling copied videos or CDs, and web pirates can be very slippery.”

The study also showed that legal alternatives, such as Spotify, iTunes, and other similar services actually did more to curb piracy than outright blocking—which, as Ars users likely know, can easily be spoofed through the use of VPNs, Tor, and other circumventing technologies.

The Musicmetric report, which was released in September 2012, notes that:

Of the Top 10 fastest growing markets on BitTorrent, only France has access to the music streaming service Spotify, whereas in the top 10 fastest shrinking countries, Spotify is available in 5 the markets (including the Top 2).

This implies, (although does not prove causation) that the proliferation of free to access or low cost streaming services is making a dent piracy rates in the countries where those services are available.